Rest of a Life
by misscam
Summary: There is no happily ever after with him. She's learned it. She just wishes she hadn't, that she could live in an illusion of the two of them, for the rest of their lives. [TenRose]


Rest of a Life  
by Camilla Sandman

Disclaimer: BBC's characters. My words.

Author's Note: Spoilers for "The Satan Pit" and previous series two episodes, and AU from there, really. Speculation on the return of a villain. Character death.  
For the Summer Solstice Fic Exchange, for Dynapink, who wanted to see the following things: The line "I am a doctor, after all." A sentimental reference to any female Gallifreyan. Formal attire.  
Thanks to Saz for beta.

II

It all starts with a mistake, really.

The scene: A gathering of new humans on Pluto, suspected to include the janitor at PlutoCorp HQ, and really a Bussak Overlord from the planet Redam. Formal attire, Rose in her best white dress and red ribbons in her hair, the Doctor in a tux and hair not yielding to any restraints. Flowers hanging from the ceiling, musicians hanging from the walls, playing a somewhat familiar tune.

The intention: Have a word with the Bussak, save Pluto, be goofy, head back to the TARDIS and bugger on off into time and space. Any other day.

The outcome: Being joined together in holy matrimony in a mass wedding by Nussak Holylord, the local priest.

"Right," the Doctor says, still holding her hand, and not looking too troubled. "So I apparently mumble a bit. Nussak, Bussak, what's the difference?"

"The ability to wed people," Rose points out, looking at all the people snogging around them, and then at his lips. He curves them into a slightly guilty smile, one she almost wants to kiss off him.

"Very small difference," he replies, indicating with this fingers just how tiny. She snorts.

"Very small? I'm entitled to half your worldly goods if you divorce me."

"Very funny," he deadpans, and she feels increasingly amused.

"I could call myself Mrs. Doctor."

"Hilarious."

"Mum's your mother-in-law!"

"No," he says very firmly, leading her away. She follows, still giggling.

"She is, though!"

"Rose, as your husband, I order you to never say the in-law word ever again."

"I'm so going to disobey that one," she shoots back, skipping merrily by his side. "Till death do us part, she's your mother-in-law. The rest of our lives."

He stops very sharply, looking at her as if she's just struck him with something.

"Not ours," he says tonelessly. "The rest of your life."

The words hurt, a sharp sort of pain she can taste, metallic against her tongue. She forgets. She keeps forgetting, because she wants to. Truth does strike. She remembers.

'ØYou can spend the rest of your life with me,' he said, an age of travel ago, 'Øbut I can't spend the rest of mine with you.'

There is no happily ever after with him. She's learned it. She just wishes she hadn't, that she could live in an illusion of the two of them, for the rest of their lives.

"Doctor..." She tries to voice something, perhaps a comfort, perhaps a desire to have him comfort her. But the moment's already passed, and he's slipped away from her, smiling again.

"Come on, Rose," he says merrily. "There won't be a rest of anything unless we get **B**-ussak to give up ideas of dominating the whole solar system from the tiniest planet in it."

She does follow him, but not without a last glance behind her, where people are still laughing and kissing and dancing in a rain of falling flowers. Newlyweds. Like them, though that is a bit of a joke, really.

Definitely.

Mostly.

Vaguely.

How long is the rest of a life, she wonders, and has a feeling it's never long enough. It's not long enough for Bussak in the end, who dies by own mistake, and almost kills them by it too. Almost.

It starts with a mistake, really, and what follows is not without them.

II

Rose is pretty sure she's lived over twenty years now, but she feels almost timeless, going back and forth at will (or his will, at least). What's a year when millions of year are at their fingertips on a million different planets? (Funny how it's almost always Earth, still.) The Doctor would know, she's pretty sure, but she never asks. He knows, and doesn't alert her to birthdays, his or hers. There has to be a reason.

He is amazingly good at forgetting on purpose, that she knows. Like forgetting to knock and walk in when she's half in her dress still, and half taking it off impatiently. He doesn't even look that bothered.

"Oh," he says, back in his normal clothes she notes, "what is it in the human genetic make-up that makes you so slow around clothes? Picking them, getting into them, getting out of them..."

"You've timed a lot of people in the act of stripping, then?" she asks irritably, clutching the breast piece of the dress to her, trying to get a foot back into it at the same time and ending up getting her heel stuck on it instead.

He shrugs. "It's something to do when bored."

"You're bored when people undress?"

"Or dress! Or pick hats. Or choose bodies," he says, and she stares at him. "What?"

"Bodies? Did... No." She shakes the mental image away, and decides to revert back to an earlier claim instead. "So if I took my kit off, you'd be sitting there, counting?"

She doesn't really give him time to answer, feeling a devil rise in her. She knows it's a bad idea, oh so bad, but sometimes she thinks he's just got no sexuality at all and sometimes she thinks he hides it and sometimes she thinks he just projects it onto people that are not her. Maybe there's a way to find out.

She lets the dress drop completely, and steps out of it a little clumsily, since her heel takes a little forced freeing. She really wishes she'd picked a less silly pair of knickers (Snoopy) and a more interesting bra (plain black) this morning, but done is done.

He looks carefully blank, but he doesn't stomp off in disgust, which she supposes is something.

"Fifteen," he says, waiting a heartbeat. "Sixteen."

She doesn't take her eyes off him as she removes the bra. The high heels she kicks off, and the knickers she pushes down and leaves there as she walks over to her dresser. She can feel him look at her as she takes time to carefully choose a red push-up bra Shareen got her, and the thong she bought to surprise Mickey in and never got around to. She doesn't rush getting them on, even if she feels awkward and very, very naked.

T-shirt next, something red, and jeans, easy and practical, but she is aware of the cloth against her skin more than usual. Aware of his gaze too, eyes dark and never leaving her as she zips the jeans up.

"Done," she says.

"Four hundred and sixty five," he replies, exhaling slowly. "I think. Might've counted one hundred and four twice."

"What was so special about one hundred and four?"

"You bent over," he says evenly.

Definitely with a sexuality then, she decides, and walks over until she's looking up into his face, close enough to touch and yet not doing it. He looks at her very intently, making no moves to invite anything, but not to reject anything either. Such a careful balance she almost wants to shake him until he falls one way or the other.

"You know what you're doing, Rose?"

She licks her lips. "No. But we're newlyweds. Sort of. We should be shagging like bunnies."

"With fluffy ears and tails on?"

She can't help but imagine it, and that's not particular helpful to keeping a face straight. "If you want."

He watches her, still so very intent. "What do you want, Rose?"

"You," she whispers, mouth dry.

"It won't make me hold on stronger," he says, putting a hand to her cheek. "I don't need it to... I... It won't stop me from letting you go."

She nods, not even sure if his words hurt or if it's just her heart beating faster. "What do you want, Doctor?"

He stares beyond her. "I want a tie with a sheep on. I want life to live. I want time to be mine. I want my TARDIS not to be alone. I want a thousand planets to stop killing another thousand. I want the Daleks to burn and always be ashes. I want a chocolate-coated biscuit. I want my people to be there for me to ignore. I want to know she's watching over them. I want Gallifrey. I want death to be reversible when I decide it's right. I want Rose Tyler to kiss me. I want..."

She doesn't let him finish, pressing her lips to his hurriedly and a little clumsily, gracing his cheek before she corrects. His lips are parted, and she slips her tongue in, slowly exploring the flesh inside. There's a slight taste to him that feels almost alien, but then, so he is. He lets her more than he participates in it, and she is a little mad at him for it.

He can't play this game with her forever.

She steps back and breaks the kiss, watching him intently. Any other guy would probably have her up against the wall already, but at least she notes that his eyelids are lowered a little and he breathes more rapidly.

"You don't need to," he says quietly. "You're always going to be Rose to me regardless. We don't need this."

"Do you always just follow what you need?"

"No."

She shrugs. "Then we could... We could see how it goes. I have time. We could take it slow."

He steps up to her this time, putting his thumb on her lips. "Time's got you. You don't have time. So little time, Rose. Blink of an eye, end of a century."

When he kisses her, it is very controlled and very careful, but it is a kiss, and it is his, and she feels like she's won something.

She's not sure what.

II

He starts kissing her sometimes, after danger or before danger, and with increasingly less care and more force. She starts calling him 'husband', mainly as a joke, and he does make silly remarks on it, but he does answer to it too, and she almost feels like she's got a leash on him. A very, very long one, granted, but something that makes her feel like she could yank him back.

Maybe that's an illusion too, but she needs it.

Something's changing. She can feel it, even without his lips on hers. Something's been changing since she met him. With her, in her, to her. She's not sure she likes all of it, but she's started to learn changes don't come with a preferred option.

His didn't, but she did get used to it, and grew to like it too. Still likes it now, particularly the hair she can run her fingers through, and the way he can curve his tongue inside her mouth. She wonders what else he can do with it.

She finds out when she gets arrested in London of 1617, and when the Doctor eventually comes to get her out, he looks wild-eyed and very, very calm. He feels her over very roughly, ignoring her protests, and ignoring her attempts to talk as he drags her by the hand through London streets.

"I couldn't let that girl get the blame for stealing some food!" she protests, getting yet more silence in reply. "Doctor? What's the big deal, I've been in worse trouble before."

"I was shown the wrong cell," he says evenly. "Where a blonde girl lay dead."

"Oh."

She wishes she could see his face, but all she can feel is his hand holding hers, a steel grip.

"Did you think she was me?"

He doesn't answer, and she keeps silent until they get back to the TARDIS, and he slams the door behind both of them.

"Don't do that again," he says, an order and she's not even sure what it means. He doesn't even wait for an answer, already turning to fiddle with the TARDIS console. "It's hard enough as it is. Don't do that."

"Don't do what? Be mistaken for another blonde? Be assumed dead? It's not my fault if you jump to conclusions," she points out, folding her arms as she walks over slowly. "Besides, the Beast said I would die in battle. That was hardly a battle. Maybe a ruckus at most."

He turns on her very sharply. "If you believe that, if you say you believe that, I'm taking you home right now."

"Doctor!" she protests, but he still her with a hand on hers.

"Tell me you don't believe it," he says, and it's a plea and an order both.

"I don't," she whispers, and wonders if it's a lie. She doesn't have much time to think about it as he kisses her, strangely gentle for all the force in it. She tilts her head back and feels his tongue travel the length of her neck and his teeth scrape slightly against her collarbone. She clutches slightly at his shoulders as he lifts her up and lets her straddle him, without even pausing in his current oral exploration of skin. His hands are very warm on her back, pushing up her t-shirt and supporting her at the same time.

"This where I whisper 'Take me, Time Lord'?" she whispers against his ear, and he makes a noise that might be a snort.

"Humans and your funny ideas," he says, pausing to look at her with an expression she has no idea what is. "Your funny phrases. What's wrong with a 'fancy a shag?', I will never know."

"Fancy a shag?" she asks, brushing her breasts a little more forcefully against his chest.

"Might as well," he replies, voice strangely sad. Hardly stirring encouragement, but then he pushes a hand inside her trousers and knickers both, and that is very encouraging indeed. The angle is not the best and she shifts a little impatiently, whimpering when he finally does find the right spot.

"Rose," he says softly, watching her face. She has to close her eyes, and bite down on her own lip so hard she can almost taste blood. But the words still make their way out.

"I love you."

"Yes," he agrees. "That you do."

She remembers afterwards shedding clothes and tearing at his, and skin, so much skin and the look on his face as he thrust into her, and the texture of the wall against her back as he found a hard-paced rhythm, and the feel of his teeth against her tongue as he gasped into the kiss and so many sensations so focused they were all a mess, but it's those words that burn into memory and stay there.

She thinks he must love her. She's just not sure what love is to him.

II

He doesn't sleep, she finds, waking to him drawing slow circles on her exposed hipbone and staring into the gloom of her room. Thinking, always thinking, a million thoughts away from her. She wonders what it must be like to always be speeding away in some way or another.

"Hey," she whispers, tilting her head back to kiss his neck. "Can't sleep?"

"I can sleep," he says absentmindedly. "Did you know, when you sleep, you sounds like a Deglarion lullaby?"

"I sing in my sleep?"

"You snore. They consider snoring a high form of music."

She rolls herself on top of him, poking a finger on his chest. "Liar."

He just smiles, pressing a kiss against her fingers.

"Why don't you sleep, then?"

"Because when I sleep, time doesn't," he says quietly. "It passes. Planets die. Memories fade. Humans age. I can feel it."

"Does it hurt?" she asks, pressing a finger to his temple. Somehow, she seems to know it does.

He looks almost thoughtful. "For a human, it would. For my people, it's just what we are. Time Lords."

"With your body-changing skills," she says, remembering what he was. "Does it hurt to die?"

"Oh yes," he says almost cheerfully. "Every time."

She supposes she will find out eventually, but she won't be around to discuss the experience after. She almost wishes she could be. Maybe they would be closer to equals then. For now, she takes what she can, and kisses him very slowly, and he, he kisses her back with almost desperation.

Time's passing. He must be feeling it.

She's beginning to feel a bit afraid.

II

She gets to know fear up close and personal the day the Doctor goes off wandering in a space ship and part of it has a rather unfortunate airlock accident. It could be the part the Doctor is in. It could not be.

When she finally does find the Doctor, merrily chatting to a robot janitor, Rose is in a livid rage. It doesn't help that he's looking cheerful, and even giving her a wave that makes it tempting to just snap his hand off at the wrist and smack him with it.

"Rose!" he says, still obviously delighted to see her, but that just makes her more angry this time, "meet Janitor Alpha-Atchoo."

"I hate you," she says, and he makes a surprised face.

"That's a little harsh. You only just met him!"

"I meant you-you, not him."

"Oh." He looks thoughtful for a moment. "That's a little more fair, then."

"I had no idea where you were," she flings at him. He hardly reacts.

"That's not uncommon, I like a good wander..." he starts, and she can almost literary see red for a moment, and he finally, finally seems to get it. She doesn't fight him when he embraces her, even if she'd like to give him and life a good smacking both.

"What happened?" he asks, rubbing her back slightly.

"Airlock accident. I didn't know if you were..."

"Oh," he says, his chest reverberating against her cheek as he breathes. "Oh."

"It hurts to worry about you sometimes."

"I know."

He probably does that, if he feels anything like what she does. She feels a small comfort at that, something they share. Something that's theirs.

"Do they know if anyone was in that section?" he asks, because he's the Doctor, and he cares.

"They think so."

He frees himself gently. "Better see if we can go help. I am a doctor, after all."

"You are," she agrees, and she gives him the kiss she's been longing to, a reaffirmation that he's alive and breathing by taking his breath by her own. "You can bring your janitor friend."

"I was hoping you'd say that."

Later, when Alpha-Atchoo saves their lives and everyone else's too, she is glad the Doctor wanders off to befriend strangers after all.

II

London, her time (sort of. She's not sure she has a time of her own still). A peaceful return home turned not so peaceful, as always seems to be the case, and Rose is getting a little tired of that too. For once, it's mostly humans making trouble, humans she and the Doctor have encountered.

She's beginning to wish they hadn't.

"So, basically," the Doctor sums up, "we're stuck in a hermetically sealed room and we're running out of air."

"Yes," she agrees, "and you lost your sonic screwdriver."

"I did not lose it. It's been unintentionally left in a section of the time-space continuum I am unfamiliar with."

She waits a heartbeat. "You lost it."

"Yes."

She laughs, but it sounds hysterical even to her. He sits down next to her, watching the bare walls and the single bull and letting out one earnest sigh.

She's pretty sure he hasn't given up, that he's still thinking and considering a million plans, but she still wishes he wouldn't do that. It's easier for her to pretend when he does too.

"They always lock in people to die in such dreary places," he remarks, sounding as if he's given that thought before. "Be better if they made it places so grand people didn't want to escape. Higher rate of success, and could employ a lot of out-of-work designers that way."

"Install very nice beds people could have a last shag in, that sort of thing?"

"That sort of thing."

She thinks about it a bit. "That'd be nice. We had our last shag up against the TARDIS console. That was hardly comfortable."

"We haven't had our last shag yet," he says, as close to a promise they'll get out of here as she's likely to get.

"No?"

"No."

She beams, and he beams, and she has a thought. "Are you sorry we...?"

"Are you?"

"I don't know." She breathes a bit, remembering. "I don't know what would've been different."

"I do," he says quietly. "Could've been worse. Could've been better."

"I like it just like it is," she says, and tilts her head to kiss him. Strangely, he pulls back. "What?"

"I'd rather not snog you when your mother is five seconds away from opening that door with my sonic screwdriver."

"What?"

The door slams open to reveal her mum sure enough, who looks torn between pride and rage.

"I thought you said you lost the sonic screwdriver!"

"I did! Down Jackie's top when we looked to be captured. I didn't know where Jackie was after that, so I didn't know where it was. Hello Jackie, did you have too much trouble?"

Some days, Rose reflects, she could bloody well kill him herself.

Instead, she just lets slip the mother-in-law part, and she's not entirely convinced the Doctor wouldn't choose death over Jackie's reaction.

II

She hasn't even had time to shed clothes when he pushes her down on the bed and pushes into her at the same time, kissing her somewhat desperately and she clutches his hair almost violently and it's very hard and rough and full of life. She likes it.

She's also quite terrified.

"I love you," she whispers when he bites down on her shoulder, and his reply is so muffled it could be anything, and she lets it be what she wants to hear.

Later, he does take his time exploring every inch of her, even the underside of her knee and the gap between her toes, but she can feel the strained impatience in him and she knows something will happen soon. He can feel it coming, and she... she can feel him.

Time doesn't stop, not even for a Time Lord, she knows.

II

She never quite expected to die like this. In a tower of Cybermen, no way out, and the Cybermen have to die, and thus she with them. She's not sure the Doctor knows he's killing her too with whatever he's feeding into the controls of this place from the TARDIS, but she thinks he might not stop even if he did know. Even if he does. He needs to save the world. He always needs to save the world.

She knew that when she married him, she thinks a little hysterically. Okay, so it probably wasn't a real, legally binding marriage, but it sure felt like one. A very weird, twisted, dangerous and alien one.

She wishes she could say goodbye, even if it's just to the cameras he might've patched into, but she's hiding behind a console, and if she stands up, a Cyberman might see her and end her life even faster. Maybe volunteering for the job of bringing the magnetic link into here wasn't such a bright idea. Especially when she failed to get the 'then get the hell out of there, Rose' part down.

Then again, she always had a feeling she would sooner or later make a mistake in that part. She still stayed with him.

Perhaps she did expect to die like this after all, and everything else was just an illusion.

It was a good one.

She is terrified, but she stands up still, giving the camera a cheerful wave.

"See you then, Doctor."

Maybe she will, the wolf in her mind howls. Maybe she will.

The Cybermen moves and she stands still, and time, time always runs out.

This is the rest of a life, she thinks, a heartbeat, and it's not enough, never enough. She wants more.

There is no more.

It all ends with a death, really.

Hers.

FIN


End file.
